212 ANNUAL REPORT 



that great universities are built up. Surely we are in sufficient 

 peril from the multiplication of colleges here, without the 

 State adding to our peril by adopting a policy of division and 

 weakness. 



The one science which, more than all others, is especially ser- 

 viceable to agriculture is agricultural chemistry, using this 

 term in its widest sense, as embracing the whole science of vege- 

 table and animal production. As the object of agriculture is to 

 "raise from the soil as large a quantity as i)0ssible of useful vege- 

 table products, or indirectly, of animal products," it is very evi- 

 dent that the farmer who does anything more than in a blind 

 way to trust to nature for his crops, must understand the com- 

 position of plants, of animals and of soils. True, very many 

 men without scientific knowledge succeed as farmers, because by 

 experience and observation, their own or other people's, they 

 have reached substantially the same conclusions as those reached 

 by science. But if boys are to be taught how to become good 

 farmers, — better farmers than their fathers, — it must be by the 

 scientific training, and not merely by experience. Now for this 

 scientific training in agricultural chemistry — the most import- 

 tant — the all-important scientific subject, what need of a sepa- 

 rate college, with its new buildings, new laboratories, new library, 

 new apparatus and material, and new professors, when now, as 

 things are, without a dollar's additional expense, the whole 

 science of agricultural chemistry can be taught in our present 

 laboratories, and taught, too, under the direction of a professor 

 as accomplished as he is modest, a graduate of Harvard Univer- 

 sity, and a student in both England and Germany; when, too, a 

 pratical application of the principles of science can be made on 

 the university farm, especially selected on account of its admir- 

 ably diversified soil. 



It is not because I happen to be president of the university 

 that I oppose the establishment of a separate college of agricul- 

 ture. The separation of the college of agriculture from the uni- 

 versity would not impair the usefulness of the university in other 

 directions, unless, indeed, the State, burdened with the support 

 of two institutions, should withdraw its support from the univer- 

 sity and thus stop it in its career of progress upon which it has 

 fairly entered and to which it challenges attention. I do not 

 understand that the most earnest advocate of separation desires 

 to impair the power and usefulness of the university. But I op- 

 pose the esablishment of a separate college of agriculture, as a 



